1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to user interfaces for document scanning, and more specifically to selecting text regions from an image scanned.
2. Description of Related Art
As technological advances in digital photography continue to increase the performance of digital cameras while reducing their cost, digital cameras may become widely used as document scanners in general office environments. For example, images from a hardcopy document may be captured by a camera positioned over a desktop and digitized for further processing and display on a computer monitor. This type of scanning promotes a xe2x80x9cscan-as-you-readxe2x80x9d interface between paper and electronic media and is often referred to as xe2x80x9cover-the-deskxe2x80x9d scanning. An example of such an over-the-desk scanning system is disclosed by Wellner in U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,148 entitled xe2x80x9cInteractive Copying System.xe2x80x9d
One advantage of over-the-desk scanning versus traditional contact scanning is that of convenience because it is not necessary to remove hardcopy documents from their usual place of reading. This encourages a more casual type of scanning where a user is able to scan a small amount information from a document as it is encountered while reading.
For example, a short text sequence (e.g., 5-10 words) can be recorded by a camera and then converted into coded text by applying optical character recognition (OCR). The OCRed version of the selected text may then be copied into an electronic document where it can be manipulated by a text editing or word processing application on a computer system. This type of scanning saves the user from having to retype the selected text into a computer system.
One approach to scanning selected text regions of a camera image is to select a region by using a mouse to define two points via a xe2x80x9cclick-and-dragxe2x80x9d operation. Another approach is to click on a start point and click on the end point. Once the text region is selected by the user, it can then be copied into the system clipboard (or other memory resource maintained by the operating system) and then subsequently copied into an electronic document (also referred to as a target document). The target document may be an electronic document created from a spreadsheet application, word processing application, presentation application, or other application program.
Scanning short text sequences with a camera offers a viable solution to a user only if the short text sequence can be selected and copied at a faster speed than the amount of time it would take a user to retype such a text sequence. The speed at which a selected text region is copied into a target document can be improved by minimizing the amount of time it takes a user to select a text region.
A system, method and program for selecting text from one or more images of at least one document using auto-completion according to one embodiment of the present invention is described. In response to user input of a partial word, optical character recognition (OCR) results for one or more images of at least one document are searched for word matches. The user is presented with a word match for acceptance. If the user accepts the word match, the word match is copied into an electronic document. If the user does not accept the word match, another word match is presented until all word matches have been presented or until the user accepts a word match.
A system, method and program for selecting text from an image of a document using auto-completion while providing user feedback according to another embodiment of the present invention is described. In response to user input of a partial word, OCR results of an image of a document is searched for word matches. The image with all word matches highlighted with emphasis is displayed. The displayed image also-highlights one of the word matches with additional emphasis to indicate it is being offered to the user for acceptance. If the user accepts the offered word match, feedback is provided to the user indicating that the offered word match represents a word selected for copying into an electronic document.
A system, method and program for selecting text from an image of a document having user annotations according to an alternative embodiment of the present invention is described. An image of an annotated document is retrieved. A selected region is identified based on the user annotations. The OCR results of the image of the annotated document is searched for a match of the selected text region. The selected text region is copied into an electronic document.
A system, method and program for selecting a text region from a document, which includes a table with a plurality of cells according to a further embodiment of the present invention is described. In response to user input of a character string, OCR results of an image of the table is searched for cell matches. The cell match is displayed and copied into an electronic document.
Other features of the present invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description which follows.